McKenzie: Wallabies were too passive in first half

Australia head coach Ewen McKenzie says that his Wallabies were "too
passive" in their 51-20 Rugby Championship and Bledisloe Cup loss to New
Zealand's All Blacks.

The Rugby World Cup champion All Blacks responded to last week's 12-all draw
by running in a six try to two bonus point victory over the Wallabies.

Australia scored the first points of the match but two minutes later the All
Blacks had levelled the scores.

The early two minute lead turned out to be the only time in the contest that
the Wallabies were in the lead even though the All Blacks played for 20 minutes
with 14 men after being shown yellow cards to captain Richie McCaw and Ben Franks.

The Wallabies also lost a player to the sin bin when Rob Simmons infringed
in an All Black maul and while he was off the New Zealand side scored 14 points
which put them into a 23-6 lead at half time.

McKenzie said after the match that his team were too passive in the first half
which allowed the All Blacks to build a strong first half lead which meant the
Wallabies had to chase the game.

"Tonight was a great opportunity for us and we showed some character towards
the end but we didn't get into the game," said McKenzie.

"We kicked off and got three points but it was one-way traffic after that."

"It doesn't matter which sector of the game, we didn't take control or
dominate any of that so it was pretty disappointing. "

"We can't sit here and pretend anything other than we didn't perform to
our expectations," he said.

All of the Rugby Championship teams get next week off and the Wallabies return
in two weeks time in Perth where they will host South Africa's Springboks.